Barry Moser

Moser was born in 1940 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.^[3] Moser studied at the Baylor School, Auburn University, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga,^[4] and did graduate work at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He studied printmaking with Leonard Baskin.^[5][6]

Moser is known for his illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, each of which consisted of more than a hundred prints, and the former of which won him the National Book Award for design and illustration in 1983.^[7] He has illustrated nearly 300 other works as well, including portions of the Time Life book series The Enchanted World, A River Runs Through It, and Moby-Dick. He published his own illustrated Bible edition,^[3] and he illustrated the Allen Mandelbaum translation of Dante's Inferno, published in 1980 as Inferno: First Book of the Divine Comedy.

He has been on the faculty of the Department of Illustration Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and was also on the faculty of the Williston Northampton School for many years. He was Professor in Residence and Printer to the College at Smith College until his retirement in May 2025.^[8] Barry Moser also teaches Life Drawing at the Glen East Workshop, held in summers in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.

His works have been displayed in such places as the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, Harvard University, and the Library of Congress.

In 2007 the Smithsonian Art Collectors Program commissioned Moser to create a print for their Small Treasures series, the sales of which benefit educational and cultural programs through the Smithsonian Associates. The resulting relief engraving, An Old Chestnut is on display in the S. Dillon Ripley Center in the National Mall.